How Ableism Fuels Racism: Dismantling the Hierarchy of Bodies in the Church

by Lamar Hardwick

Overview

2024 International Impact Book Award (Religion)

★ Publishers Weekly starred review

"Marshaling fine-grained historical detail and scrupulous analysis, Hardwick persuades."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

As a Black autistic pastor and disability scholar, Lamar Hardwick lives at the intersection of disability, race, and religion. Tied to this reality, he heeded the call to write How Ableism Fuels Racism to help Christian communities engage in critical conversations about race by addressing issues of ableism.

Hardwick believes that ableism—the idea that certain bodies are better than others—and the disability discrimination fueled by this perspective are the root causes of racial bias and injustice in American culture and in the church. Here, he uses historical records, biblical interpretation, and disability studies to examine how ableism in America led to the creation of images, idols, and institutions that perpetuate both disability and racial discrimination.

He then goes a step further, calling the church into action to address the deep-seated issues of ableism that started it all and offering practical steps to help readers dismantle ableism and racism both in attitude and practice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587436123
Publisher:	Baker Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/20/2024
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Lamar Hardwick (DMin, Liberty University) is the former lead pastor of Tri-Cities Church in Atlanta, Georgia, and the author of Disability and the Church: A Vision for Diversity and Inclusion. He is a graduate of the Yale Divinity School Clergy Scholar Program and a 2017 graduate of Georgia Forward's Young Gamechangers program. Hardwick regularly writes and speaks on disability inclusion in the church. He has written for Huffington Post and BioLogos and is a frequent guest on radio shows and podcasts.

Table of Contents

Contents
A Note about Disability Language
Introduction: In Their Own Eyes
1. Disability, Blackness, and Early American Christianity
2. The Road to Racism: Ableism, Religion, and Racial Bias
3. John Piper and the Politics of Desirability
4. Do No Harm: Religious Rhetoric, Disability, and Healthcare
5. Blackballed: Ableism and the Black Church
6. The Disabled God and the Rise of American Jesus
7. Bodies of Work: Exceptionalism, Ableism, and Our Theology of Work
8. Disability, the Cross, and Unraveling Shame: Remembering Jesus and Reimagining Disability
Conclusion: Jesus, Joy, and Justice

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/13/2023

Pastor Hardwick (Disability and the Church) delivers a searing indictment of the ableist theology that has fueled racial bias in the American church and society. According to the author, Christianity played a foundational role “in developing a caste system in colonial America” by harnessing an ableism that “define which bodies are best... creates images of normal and ideal bodies that neither Black nor disabled bodies can achieve.” Initially, being a Christian meant that one was white, European, and of a “superior nature, intellect, and spirituality,” Hardwick writes. When the religion eventually spread to enslaved peoples, those who were baptized by European missionaries were frequently forced to vow “that their salvation only impacted the condition of their souls and not the material conditions they endured,” setting up a faith designed to “meet the economic goals of slavery.” Building his analysis slowly and methodically, Hardwick elucidates how the intersecting forces of race, ableism, and Christianity exert their power far beyond church walls. Among other topics, he touches on language used to describe disability and how it has been harnessed in secular and religious settings; the racism entrenched in the U.S. healthcare system; and how the Black church has symbolized a “safe space for bodies excluded from the mainstream church,” as well as how it might become more disability friendly. Marshaling fine-grained historical detail and scrupulous analysis, Hardwick persuades. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly